


a poison that opens your eyes

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [299]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Blood and Injury, Celegorm wants to be good but a fundamental part of him doesn't know how, Gen, Medical Procedures, No Anesthesia, POV First Person, Surgery, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, or almost none, physical comfort, set directly after 'the sad refusal to give in', title from August Strindberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26365627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “Is he recovered?” I ask, as cold as the earth underfoot.Fingon shakes his head, his mouth sewn up uneasily. “His fall,” he says. “It wasn’t the break. It’s an abscess. Nasty thing. Needs to be lanced, and soon.”
Relationships: Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Curufin | Curufinwë, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Fingon | Findekáno, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [299]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	a poison that opens your eyes

I see my father.

He’s the last person I want to call to my mind’s eye, yet it’s me who’s doing it. I know he isn’t real, else Huan would be growling. You can call it God, if you want to, or guilty ghosts, or you can call it the strange Gaelic magic the man himself used to blabber about.

I won’t speak to him. Vision or not, he’s nothing left to teach me. And so, I stare him down.

“ _Celegorm_.”

The voice is—not Athair’s. And nor is the face, after all. I’ve been damn near hallucinating, standing here, trying to conjure every thought and figure but that of Maitimo, reaching for me with no hand.

“Oh,” I say thickly. “It’s you.”

“And who else would it be?’ Curufin arches a brow. He looks almost sad, or maybe that’s just the circles under his eyes. Does he sleep? Or does he just pick his way through the diamond mine, looking for visions. He looks out of place under the white sunlight.

He says, before I can answer a question that begs none,

“Maglor told me.”

Right. Fingon. Fingon putting his steel into my brother’s bones. The rage is like a wall. I can feel my head and hands hot with the blood I’d shed, slamming again it.

I hate how much I understand that, for someone like Fingon, it wasn’t the wrong choice.

God, I want to vomit.

“What’s your thinking?” I ask.

“You told me that Maedhros must have made them very angry, for them to take his hand,” Curufin says. He shrugs. “I didn’t know if you were right. But now I own you must be. It isn’t indifference that drives nails in. Didn’t the Holy Book tell us as much?”

“He’s not Christ Crucified,” I snap.

“Isn’t he?” Curufin laughs his soundless, unamused laugh. “He might as well be. It’s a Godless land.” He moves toward me, and I half-expect another strange embrace, like Maglor’s. _That_ surprised me. I still don’t know what he was after. We’ve hated each other comfortably since childhood.

Less comfortably, these past months.

“Maglor says you beat Fingon. Leave a mark?”

“I was out of my head,” I mumble. Huan knocks _his_ head against my knee. “Fingon’s a doctor. He’s inclined to surgery. And he brought Maitimo back.”

“That’s certainly the tale Fingolfin and Finrod are spreading to those interested,” Curufin says. He sniffs the air. “Lord, it smells like snow.”

“Not quite cold enough,” I say. Shoulder to shoulder, we walk. His is still a few inches lower than mine.

Curufin doesn’t know that I didn’t catch him. Fingon does. But it was both of our plan, I think, sick to my bones. Fingon’s and mine. We both wanted him to walk, and what does that make us? Bonded, somehow? No—we can’t be. I’ve never shared my love of Maitimo with Fingon. He wants to be like another brother, and I can’t allow it, even if Maitimo _did_.

And yet it’s Fingon who returned him to us. Maglor, the lily-livered vacillator, has thanked him for that. Conceding our rights, with no thought to our history.

“You’re troubled,” Curufin says, blinking slowly at me. “Will it ever end?”

“Will Maitimo ever have his hand back? Or the rest of him?”

 _It isn’t indifference_ , Curufin said, a moment ago. That more than anything chills me to the bone. What, then, am I to think of every other scar? What am I to make of—of the curses they marked him with? I suppose you could say, as Gwindor did, that I can read on his body what was done to him. But I still feel as if I don’t know, and don’t want to.

“If Fingon was going to cut off his hand,” I say, kicking at a matted tussock of grass, “He might still be sorry for it. It’s nothing to be proud of.”

“They’re all proud of their kindness,” Curufin agrees. “You remember how Fingolfin insisted that the charges drop, after the matter of the pistols. _I_ say he was a fool for taunting Athair, when we’d lately been examining the guns.”

It’s a memory I don’t like to think on. Like most of my memories, good or ill. Prod an old, angry wound, or open a new one by trying to seek comfort—

I had enough of it all when Maitimo was gone from us. Now he’s here, and the walls close in on me. I don’t need memories to aid them.

“Celegorm!”

“ _Jesus_ …” Curufin breathes, almost laughing again. “He has some gumption.”

For it’s Fingon, chasing us down, with his ridiculous braids flapping.

I promised Aredhel—well, never mind. I’m holding my blood in my veins a little longer, until I have a better idea of why it ought to flow.

“What is it?” I ask. Curufin has folded his arms over his chest. His face says he knows. Even though Fingon’s a fool, I suspect he can read that message.

“Maedhros is asking for you,” Fingon says. _His_ face is red. Anger of his own? Or embarrassment? There’s a fine bruise forming too, where I struck him. It is still red, but a darker shade. I land my blows, though I do not always take them. I wonder if someone should’ve struck me.

(We left him. I left him. Those wounds are marked on _me_.)

“Is he recovered?” I ask, as cold as the earth underfoot.

Fingon shakes his head, his mouth sewn up uneasily. “His fall,” he says. “It wasn’t the break. It’s an abscess. Nasty thing. Needs to be lanced, and soon.”

I stare at him, dumbly. A dumb beast, maybe. I hunger, and I kill. But that’s all. For a brief moment I suspect something darker than that in Fingon. Some suggestion he must have made to Maitimo.

_Since Celegorm won’t let me touch you, ask him to take the knife in his hand. Ask him to open your flesh._

“It is a delicate operation,” Fingon explain impatiently, to my silence. “He’ll need to be held very still.”

I swallow my sigh of relief. Fingon is wary, yes, and weary maybe—but he’s too blunt and naïve at once to be cruel. I must remember that. 

“No doubt you shall do it very quickly,” says Curufin. “Surgeon that you are.” Curufin _can_ be cruel, though he isn’t to me. He tips his chin down, flicking one of those searching gazes of his Fingon’s way.

Fingon does not flinch.

“Celegorm, will you come?”

“Aye,” I say. For the rest of my days, be they long or short, I’ll see the fright in Maitimo’s eyes as I showed him the fright in mine, leaping back.

It won’t happen again.

Ordinarily, Maitimo lies in the middle of the bed. It’s the one Caranthir and Amras used to share, before the room was turned over. Lord, that’s more than two weeks ago, now.

When I come in with Fingon, Maitimo is flush against the left side of the mattress, and his trousers are gone.

I’ve seen nearly all Maitimo’s sad body bared, at one time or another, but it’s always a shock to my senses. His legs—aside from the crooked thigh and the swelling—aren’t even the worst of it. They’re too thin, and stained with brands and smooth flay-marks, but they’re recognizable.

That’s just what pains me.

I know how strong and fleet-footed he once was: in running, sparring, _dancing_. I was the only one of us who could close to matching him in these. Who could batter in time with him to Maglor’s quickest jig.

He’ll never dance again.

His eyes meet mine. That same old shirt as always is drawn up to his throat. He looks foolish, there in the bed. Foolish and miserable and so far from being mine, ever again.

I wish we were dead, together. I wish when he stitched my hip shut, that pain had swept over us both in a great wave.

“Hullo, Maitimo,” I say, as I’ve said a dozen times afore. A dozen times that I must fight to keep truthful, if I keep the memories at all.

His mouth twitches. He doesn’t answer me. I realize he’s holding back tears, and I hate—I hate the monsters that did this to him, that broke him and broke him and broke what was left, more than I have ever hated anyone or anything in all the world. There aren’t curses enough. Athair, damn him, hadn’t curses enough.

“We’re all here,” Fingon says, and I am aware, as a hunter should have been at once, that Gwindor and the woman—Estrela—are also in the room. “Maitimo, I haven’t much laudanum—”

“I don’t want any,” he says. His voice is thin. Almost a whine. Takes all I have not to wince.

Gwindor says, “Russandol, think on it. It’ll dull the edge.”

Estrela sits quiet. I don’t even know what she’s here for. Won’t ask, neither, while a half-fight is brewing.

Or not. Maitimo shudders a little, his right knee jolting up and folding flat again, and murmurs,

“All right.”

Fingon goes to his table, to ready the laudanum. My knuckles are still smarting from where they crashed against Fingon’s cheek. I am tall, and whole, and stupid. When I trudge forward, my boots seem to shake the stones of the floor. I wish Huan could be with us, but it didn’t seem proper.

I don’t even know what I’m doing, but to be near him seems the best antidote to whatever poison the day has put in me. I crouch down, just beside where his trousers are draped over him. I clench my hands over my knees. I try to pretend that Fingon isn’t here, that even Gwindor and Estrela, friends who call my brother by the wrong name, aren’t here.

“Maitimo,” I say. “I—”

“Do you mind?” he asks me, very low. He’s been chewing his lips again. We’ll have to give him something to bite down on. “Staying?”

I shake my head. I thought I could speak, but now I can’t.

“There you are,” Fingon says. He steps around me and lifts a small cup to Maitimo’s lips. Maitimo drinks it without complaint, but he twists the blanket beneath him in his fingers.

Then Fingon steps back. My heart is beating like I am running, or dancing, or like I am soon to die.

“Celegorm,” Fingon says, in the same cautious tone he used to address me outside, “You’d better sit behind him. Gwindor at his feet.”

Estrela must be here to hand him things. Trust Fingon to require a proper physician’s assistant.

I stand, wiping my palms against my trousers. “You square with that, Maitimo?”

He nods. Tries to smile at me. I wish he wouldn’t.

Fingon helps him to sit up. It hurts his ribs to do so.

“Are you sure this is best?” I ask. “Oughtn’t he—lie flat?”

“It—” Fingon hesitates. “If he rests his head and shoulders against you, he can hold fast to your arm. It will be more—steadying.”

I recognize the unspoken alternatives. Holding him down by the arms. _Tying_ him down.

And so I slip in behind him, with my back to the wall, casting one leg out on the other side of his. The contrast is staggering. Mine might as well be a log, beside his.

There is no shirt at his back. I’d forgotten this. As such, I must take his scarred shoulders in my hands. Must feel the sun-roughened, lash-grooved skin, and know that my brother’s heart beats under it. I catch a glimpse of the red-lined eye-mark, too, before his head slips back against my breast.

“Shit,” I say, because we’re in it, every one of us. “Does it—do I hurt you?”

“No,” he says. “Back doesn’t, anymore. Doesn’t hurt.”

My arms are under his, my hands still hovering over his chest. I don’t want to press against his ribs. Then he surprises me, lifting his left forearm and drawing it towards himself and me, covering my left hand with his.

“It will feel better,” I lie, my lips almost brushing the crown of his head. “When this wretched thing is gone.”

He says nothing. Everyone has taken their positions. Fingon is washing his hands.

“Do you have a scrap of leather?” I ask. Hell, I’ll give up my belt for this.

“Right,” Fingon says. “Something to bite down on.” He rifles in his pockets—the fool—and is obliged to wash his hands again, when he has finally found a bit in his kit. He douses that in alcohol, too.

Strange to think, how I used to worry over Maitimo’s drinking.

Maitimo takes it in his mouth, and I can ask him no more questions. I hope he cannot feel my rapid pulse. It will only alarm him more.

A rattle of metal. Estrela’s head bobs. Gwindor, his hands resting over Maitimo’s ankles, grimaces.

They must be thinking what I am thinking, seeing a blade in Fingon’s hands.

And Maitimo? He’s still. He’s so very, very still. I can’t even feel him breathing.

“I shall make a deep incision,” Fingon says.

 _Shut your trap_ , I want to say, but he goes on talking, in that pompous, tremulous doctor-voice of his. I’d happily sniff ether, just now. I stretch the fingers of my right hand to brush against the edge of Maitimo’s left. Touching him where I can, hoping it gives him strength, not horror.

Fingon says something about _pressure_ and _drainage_ , and _blood running free of pus._ I clamp my jaw and my shoulders both, so that I don’t shudder.

Estrela swabs the swell of Maitimo’s left thigh.

Fingon stoops. Silver flashes.

I want to shut my eyes, just as I did when I held Athair against me, that last ride.

I couldn’t shut my eyes on horseback, of course. I couldn’t be a boy, then.

I can’t shut my eyes and leave Maitimo all alone, now.

The blade plunges in. Maitimo’s nails dig into the back of my hand; his ankles jerk against Gwindor’s hold. The sound that shakes his chest, trapped behind teeth and leather, is an awful one.

“Shhh,” I hear myself say. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing.” I lift my right hand, and brush my knuckles against his sweat-damp cheek. I’ve long since accepted that the only gentle touches I have in me are the ones I have for Huan.

Huan, and this brother, whom I did not love enough to save.

Blood trickles out around Fingon’s blade. Dark blood.

“I have not struck an artery,” Fingon says softly, as if we should be proud of him. Of the fact that his hands don’t tremble. “But I must go deeper. Estrela, a cloth.”

“Hold onto your brother, lad,” Gwindor says. “Hold him as tight as you can. He can bear it. He’s stronger than I am. Strong as an ox, aren’t you, Celegorm?”

Maitimo already knows that I am, so I don’t have to answer Gwindor. I just go on stroking Maitimo’s cheek. He breathes, the air slipping out of him like something tumbling down endless steps.

Fingon has mopped the blood away. Estrela takes the stained cloth. Fingon, his face like a marble statue’s, pokes his fucking scalpel deeper—deeper—

“Lancing now,” he says.

Maitimo screams again. Worse. His head thrashes, away from my hand, as if even comfort is naught but a mockery, naught but more torture.

I feel as if I can’t know this _body_ , naked and tattered and starving.

Hard to remember the soul that it houses. Hard to remember him.

I shut my eyes.

Fingon proclaims the operation a success. No one applauds him. Gwindor’s brow is beaded with sweat. Estrela’s only eye is red with tears.

Maitimo fainted, when there was still pus running out with the blood.

He wakes, only to vomit the thin, dribbling contents of his stomach. I catch what I can in my hands. Estrela comes with a cloth for that, too.

Vomiting hurts him again, and he cries like a child, quivering against me. I would that I could bar everyone from the room, and shut my own eyes and ears from his tears. That way, he would not have to feel ashamed.

Instead, I kiss his hair. I lace my fingers in his. I do not think he even feels my touch.

I am thinking of the men who did this to him. I am thinking not like a hunter, but like a monster.

I would kill them slowly.


End file.
